What was interesting coming from Republicans at the Health Care Summit yesterday was their dedication to their talking points. Republicans can't govern, but by god, they can stick to those talking points.

Each Republican said exacly the same thing to Obama: "We want you Democrats to scrap your existing health reform legislation and start over."

The Reverend does not care for Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for G.W. Bush. I'm sure he's a fine man and all, but, when I read his columns at the Washington Post, or reprinted in the AB Journal (and they reprint them all), he always comes across as a sniveling weenie.

One of the elections Republicans love pointing to and braying about, along with the election of GOP President, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, is the recent Virginia election for governor.

The Republican, Bob McDonnell, won that Viginia election for governor by a wide margin....and along with the New Jersey GOP governor win....many conservatives, and virtually all media Villagers, started trumpeting the end of the Obama era (a whole 1 year) and the return of Republicans and conservatives to power.

Republicans are great at making statements, contracts, lists, etc. Republicans are not great at governing, though,....as we've learned once again so painfully under Bush-Cheney and a majority GOP Congress. Republicans still insist that government is the problem.

On the heels of the Great Republican Thinker, Newton Gingrich's Contract With/On America....another GOP list with the intent of trashing governance came out yesterday.

Here we are beginning the second year of the Obama administration....and it's deja vu all over again. 2010 will mark the 10th year of Dick Cheney's 'shadow' administration.

At the beginning of 2009, the 9th year of the Cheney 'shadow' administration, we saw still-vice-president Dick Cheney and his newly appointed Sec. of State, daughter Liz Cheney, frightening Americans in their tagteam efforts to keep Guantanamo open, keep torture on the table and keep 9-11 perpetrator trials, secret.

I was talking to one of my daughters awhile back when she said to me that the U.S. had enough oil right here in North America to become independent of foreign sources, and all that we had to do as a nation was get it out of the ground.

By now, most readers will have heard that health insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, is raising health insurance rates for approximately 800,000 Californians, on average, between 30-39%, starting next month.

If a Californian's Anthem policy used to be, say, $8000 per year, the increases would raise that same policy cost to somewhere around $10,500 per year. Nice profit-taking work, you know, if you can get it.

As we have witnessed in real time.....ex 1/2 term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is an opportunist. Sarah is in it for the money, and perhaps the fame. That's why she quit the governor's job. Palin's brief stint as McCain's VP running mate gave her just the right amount of exposure to make leaving the governor's job profitable....so that's what she did. The report so far is that her book "Going Rogue" has made Sarah and the First Dude millionaires....so it's all working out the way Sarah had imagined. Good for her.

What Sarah Palin is not.....is a serious political candidate. Sarah, as we all witnessed during the 2008 campaign, has little, if any, understanding of...well....much of anything. When it comes to national and international policies, history, America's system of law,....or stuff like "war"....Sarah Palin is little more than a female version of Fox's Sean Hannity.....clueless, disingenuous, or both.

Because I am a hellbound, critic of religion.....and an unapologetic athiest unafraid to point out hypocrisy, lies, or anti-scientific, supernaturalistic rhetoric wherever I see it.....I have often been labeled an anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish bigot.

That's fine, of course,...I'm not bigoted towards any specific religion or denomination, let alone the folks who sit in the pews.....but this is America, and people have every right to say whatever they want to.

During the health care "debate", many Republicans rose to their feet, grabbed the nearest megaphone, and shouted that Democrats were threatening Medicare. Those collectivist Democrats, if one was to believe Republicans, were going to "eliminate services" for seniors on Medicare. At least that's what "real Americans" like ex-governor Sarah Palin and Iowa Senator Charles Grassley told us. The nation was warned repeatedly of the upcoming "death panels" that Medicare beneficiaries would face under a Democratic "takeover" of everyone's health care. The "Democrat" health care reform plan would wind up....well you remember...."pulling the plug on grandma."

On Monday, I heard Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) tell a Hardball audience that Social Security should be privatized in the same fashion G.W. Bush had proposed in 2005. Working Americans would have "personal" or "private" funds, replacing traditional Social Security, and those funds would be available for placement in the stock market. Hensarling said that Americans under 55 should have their future SS checks reduced.

It started during the 2008 presidential campaign. Republicans exclusively appealing to the radical-right base. Sarah Palin was front and center leading the effort, spewing nonsensical contradictions, ignorant and mistaken sound bites, and wild-eyed wingnut-pleasing mockery of Democrats, specifically Obama.

After the GOP's crushing defeat in that election cycle, I appealed to Republicans to quit talking, you know, crazy stuff. Quit lying and acting like a bunch of unhinged nuts.....admit conservative and GOP failures...and rebuild their disgraced political party. Simply appealing to a small minority of excitable and angry wingers was not the path back to respectability or trustworthiness.

For many years now, Republicans haven't had any new policy ideas to offer to the American people. By definition, conservatism is against change...unless it's regressive (good old days and all that).....so no new ideas coming from Republicans is to be expected. It's in the GOP DNA.

Pope Benedict announced yesterday that he would be traveling to the United Kingdom this September for a visit. Benedict also said a few other things as he spoke to English and Wales Catholic Bishops visiting the Vatican yesterday. The 'few other things' should make for some interesting fireworks when the Pope arrives in Britain this September.....

Intro: Today's Republicans often refer to Ronald Reagan as their great mentor. The Republican word made flesh, so to speak. Reagan, while campaigning, would say, provocatively, that government, itself, is America's problem, and not part of any solution. Today's Republicans, no longer capable of differentiating between rhetoric and reason, have become Reagan literalists.